It feels like one of those times where I want to cover a few different topics and in homage to Larry King, who used to write the best stream of conscious columns in USA Today where he broke up his thoughts with a…

If you have been paying attention to college football recruiting in the Magnolia State, then you might have noticed a couple of Brookhaven High sophomores who’ve picked up recent SEC offers. Defensive end Derwin Fields started with offers from Southern Miss, Ole Miss, and Auburn. Fields, a 6-foot-4 speed rusher who looks like he’s still growing, then got offers from Arkansas, Florida, Florida State, North Carolina, and Alabama. 

His classmate, sophomore offensive tackle Coderro McDaniel, picked up an offer from Ole Miss last weekend. The 6-foot-7 McDaniel began playing varsity as a freshman and will be part of an offensive line that returns intact next season for the Panthers…

Those are not the last two members of the roster at Brookhaven High to pick up offers, as there is a large contingency of future college athletes hitting King Field over the next 3-4 years. Some will be SEC guys, and some will play in the Southland or SWAC or Sun Belt while others will play for local community colleges. There will be a lot of eyes in the college recruiting world trained on BHS in the next few years…

Speaking of fun, the rumors are true, the softball team at Co-Lin is once again awesome. I’m sure I’ll write more later because there’s lots of postseason softball left to play, but the no. 3 ranked Wolves are a fearless bunch. With lots of new faces in new places, this team has a winning cohesion. 

There are batters up and down the lineup that can rake at the plate, the starting pitching has been lights out, and every game a different player ends up making a clutch play. They are 36-4 and out in front of the MACCC standings as the postseason will run through Wesson. Making the NJCAA National Tournament in Oxford, Alabama is the desired goal. The regular season home finale for CLCC will be on April 23 against Hinds starting at 4 p.m…

Coach Adam Chamblee and his baseball Wolves are also having a season to remember in Wesson. Chamblee has lost some big arms in his rotation to injury this season. The team has had to find out what “next man up” truly means. They currently sit in seventh place in the 15 team MACCC. 

In the last 10 days they have picked up splits against the top two teams in the league and nation, No. 2 Pearl River and No. 3 East Central. At PRCC in Poplarville, Co-Lin was beaten 15-5 in game one, a contest where they struck out 14 times and gave up four home runs and five doubles. Chamblee’s team came out in game two and pounded Pearl River 7-1 for the first win by the Wolves over the Wildcats since 2017. 

Then in Wesson six days later, Co-Lin played extremely sharp baseball in a low scoring battle, taking the opener 2-1 over East Central. The Warriors won game two 9-1. Chamblee has been building depth within the program over his first three seasons, and the ability to stay in the top half of the league despite the injuries speaks to those gains. 

I caught a game-two win, 11-1 over Northeast Mississippi, on a recent beautiful Saturday. NE won game one 5-0 and the ceremonial first pitch was tossed out by longtime CLCC head coach Keith Case. 

Case, who is in his first year as head coach at Simpson Academy, was there for a reunion of the 2000 and 2005 Co-Lin baseball teams, both qualifiers for the NJCAA World Series. That 2005 team is remembered as the ultimate example of a team that overcame adversity. The official picture from the national tournament had nearly as many guys standing in the wings wearing warmups and arm slings due to injury than players suited up. 

Chamblee and his guys are hoping to put together one of those types of runs as the season heads towards the finish with CLCC hosting Delta on April 26 and Meridian on April 29….

When are they going to get a hold of the stupidity in college football? This Nico Iamaleava drama, with him being told to kick rocks after trying to hold out for more NIL money ahead of the Tennessee spring game, is the latest dumb new twist in the lawless landscape that is NCAA sports right now. Let players transfer. Let players get paid. Just interject some type of rules into the equation. 

I’m about to put a tinfoil hat on for a second, but I could see the SEC or BIG 10 football media rights being bought by a member of the technocratic, billionaire class. Or maybe the Saudi sports guys who tried to buy the PGA. The NCAA holds no power, as television money has made the major conferences the real rulers of the sports. When college football has general managers now and salary caps later, the college game is headed towards being a Great Value version of the NFL…

The NCAA reminds me of the Merovingian Dynasty in the middle of the 8th century. That’s a pretty deep cut for the history nerds, of whom I count myself. You ever see me in town, likely at Janie’s, and you want to talk about the French Revolution, I am literally all ears. One of my favorite topics is The Hundred Years’ War, fought between England and France over 116 years in the 14th-15th Century. I have been reading the seminal work about the conflict, written by the legendary Barbara Tuchman, called “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century.” 

Someone recently asked me why I love history so much. I thought about Tuchman describing the Middle Ages in France and England, when knights and castles were at their peak. She goes into great detail about how fragile life was in a feudal setting, how ravaging the Black Death was to the population of the world, and how violent society was as a whole. A favorite party game of the time involved headbutting a cat tied to a post. I told my friend that I love history because I can look back at times like that and thank the Lord I was born over 500 years later. 

I try to block out the doom and gloom crowds today and realize that even when NCAA football is at its least enjoyable, it’s still a much more pleasurable hobby than the aforementioned game of feline tetherball, played with your head.

Cliff Furr writes about sports for The Daily Leader.